Entrepreneur and Investor Talks

When and how to scale your startup

Do not grow prematurely scale

Sharon Wienbar, Partner at Scale Venture Partners, gave a workshop on when to scale and how to avoid scaling prematurely. This was her talk at Vator Splash Oakland. Scale Venture Partners focuses on "growth-stage" investing. Most of the companies she invests in are already growing revenue. Most have under $4 million in revenue, but Scale has invested in companies with as little as $200,000 in revenue.

Here she talks about team dynamics and alignment around scaling, as well as whether a product is really ready to scale. She asked the question: "If you started to spend more, would you get at least the same or better result?" Great marketing and PR isn't a scalable source of cusotmers, she pointed out. Having a scalable channel to market is when "you find paid channels and you have the ability to spend more money without metrics deteriorating."

In addition, people mistake having a minimum viable product as having product-market fit.

Having product-market fit is beyond having a minimum viable product, she said. "If you give your product away, that doesn't mean it's scalable."